This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 23, 2008
A fortress described as a "treasure trove of Nazi memorabilia" is to be opened as a museum in northern France.
The complex, which was cut out of a cliff face called La Montagne du Roule by slave labour, overlooks the strategic port of Cherbourg and became a nerve centre of German resistance following D-Day.
About 200 soldiers were able to live inside the fort, which contained medical centres, a mess and dormitories, and was linked by 2,000 ft of corridors to f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 26, 2008
The body of a womanising 19th century Australian statesman has been dug up in order to resolve a paternity case.
The remains of Charles Cameron Kingston, whose behaviour caused a scandal when he was the premier of South Australia in the 1890s, were exhumed from a cemetery in Adelaide and will be subjected to DNA testing.
The unusual exhumation was requested by a prominent businessman and his sister, who believe that they are descendants of an illegitimate child believed
Source: Times (UK)
May 26, 2008
A new book which suggests that the German occupation of France encouraged the sexual liberation of women has shocked a country still struggling to come to terms with its troubled history of collaboration with the Nazis.
Like a recent photographic exhibition showing Parisians enjoying themselves under the occupation, the book's depiction of life in Paris as one big party is at odds with the collective memory of hunger, resistance and fear.
"It is a taboo subject, a
Source: AP
May 27, 2008
There's been a Clinton running for the
White House or living in it for approximately forever.
Bill, it could be said, was born to run. Running
became Hillary's destiny, too.
One quarter of Americans have never known life without
a Clinton trying for or having the presidency.
Millions have gone from diapers to diplomas in the
time of the Clintons.
When Hillary Rodham Clinton finally exits the 2008
Democratic presidential
Source: BBC
May 26, 2008
Forensic investigators in Peru say they have recovered the remains of at least 25 people from a mass grave, which could be the site of a 1984 massacre.
A group for the victims' families says it believes the grave contains more than 125 people killed by the military.
The search for mass graves follows a government-approved truth commission into atrocities committed by both the military and Shining Path rebels.
The insurgency of the Maoist guerrillas lasted two decades, ending
Source: BBC
May 26, 2008
Given pride of place in an unassuming museum on the East Coast of America is a pair of 200-year-old duelling pistols shrouded in mystery.
The intricately decorated guns were said to have been forged from the iron of a fallen meteorite.
They were a unique gift from the commander of a South American region, which would later become Argentina, to the fourth US president, James Madison.
"Permit me therefore to present to your Excellency... a specimen of the firs
Source: AFP
May 26, 2008
An alabaster head of Cleopatra and a
mask thought to belong to her lover Mark Antony have
been found near Egypt's Mediterranean city of
Alexandria, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on
Monday.
The two treasures, a bronze statue of Goddess
Aphrodite and a headless royal statue from the
Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt between 323 and
30 BC, were discovered by a joint Egyptian-Dominican
Republic team of archeologists in the
Source: Independent (UK)
May 26, 2008
The former US president Jimmy Carter has called for his country to resume trade relations with Iran, which he described as a "rational" nation. Speaking at the Hay Festival yesterday, Mr Carter also suggested the US should provide nuclear power technology and fuel to Iran as a show of goodwill.
"What happens if, in three years time, Iran has a nuclear weapon," Mr Carter asked. "I'm not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rat
Source: Independent (UK)
May 26, 2008
Stone Age Britons had a sophisticated knowledge of geometry to rival Pythagoras – 2,000 years before the Greek "father of numbers" was born, according to a new study of Stonehenge.
Five years of detailed research, carried out by the Oxford University landscape archaeologist Anthony Johnson, claims that Stonehenge was designed and built using advanced geometry.
The discovery has immense implications for understanding the monument – and the people who built it.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 25, 2008
A German doctor who allegedly sent 900 children to a Nazi death camp has been given a top medical award.
Dr Hans-Joachim Sewering, 92, a former SS member, was honoured for “services to the nation’s health system”.
The doctor has always denied sending children to Eglfing-Haar, a facility south of Munich where it’s alleged physically and mentally handicapped children were killed.
Despite the allegations, Dr Sewering enjoyed a brilliant career and is a former
Source: http://www.knoxnews.com
May 25, 2008
Frank Woodruff Buckles is stooped and bent from his 107 years, but he is not bowed. His spirit glows with the life he has lived.
First and foremost, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Buckles is America's last doughboy.
Of the more than 4 million who served in World War I, called the Great War, he has outlived everyone. His elder, veteran Harry R. Landis, died at 108 in February in Florida.
Buckles is from an era that has almost disappea
Source: Times (UK)
May 25, 2008
A flamboyant archaeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried.
Now, with a team of 12 archaeologists and 70 excavators, Zahi Hawass, 60, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has begun the search for her tomb.
In addition, after a breakthrough two weeks ago, Hawass hopes to find Cleopatra's lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, sharing her last resting place at the site of a tem
Source: Times (UK)
May 25, 2008
The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines.
When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in 1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.
Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing more than 200 men and giving rise to
Source: Nation
June 9, 2008
J. Edgar Hoover was FBI director for forty-eight years, and he was also an
author--a bestselling author. His Masters of Deceit, published in 1958 by Henry
Holt, spent thirty-one weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more
than 250,000 copies. In paperback it sold more than 2 million. But dealing with
the director presented unique challenges for Holt. The special relationship is
documented in the FBI's 234-page Henry Holt file, obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act by
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 23, 2008
John Updike delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities’ annual Jefferson Lecture Thursday night, accepting the highest honor bestowed by the federal government on humanists. Seizing on the NEH’s Picturing America project, which places reproductions of American art in public schools and libraries across the country, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author toured the artistic landscape to answer the question, “What is American about American art?” After surveying painters from John Singleton Co
Source: CNN
May 24, 2008
As president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, Jim Laychak has been involved in nearly aspect of the project's planning.
The only thing he has not done is visit the bench dedicated to his brother, Dave Laychak, who died on September 11, 2001, when a passenger airplane hit the Pentagon.
"I want to hold off and go and see his bench and touch his bench that day," said Laychak. "I wanted to save something special for me personally on September 11 when we dedicat
Source: LAT
May 24, 2008
Largely obscured in the understandable uproar over Hillary Clinton's Friday reference to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has been the fallacy of the basic point she sought to convey -- that there is nothing all that unusual about the trajectory of her battle with Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nod.
Before invoking the Kennedy killing in comments to a South Dakota newspaper that she quickly rued, Clinton said, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination
Source: NYT Book Review
May 25, 2008
Today one of the last Bowery flophouses leans up against the futuristic steel facade of the New Museum, and a bed at the Bowery Hotel can run $750 a night. After such gentrification, it can be difficult to conjure up the squalid New York that Jacob Riis documented in his groundbreaking 1889 work of photojournalism, “How the Other Half Lives.” Riis was well aware that the “other half” in New York City had become the other three-quarters, with 1.2 million impoverished New Yorkers living in slums,
Source: NYT
May 25, 2008
In an era when much of the 20th century’s lexicon of geopolitical stock phrases — Iron Curtain, “collaborator,” “enemy within” — has lost the power to stir passions, the last 10 days have proven once again that cries of “appeasement” still resonate.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals,” President Bush said before the Israeli Parliament. “We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement.”
The White House
Source: NYT
May 25, 2008
In the annals of Congressional history, Representative Wilbur D. Mills of Arkansas is remembered for the ignominious end to his long legislative career: a public display of inebriation during a dalliance with a stripper named Fanne Fox.
Before that, he helped create Medicare.
Until his downfall in the 1970s, Mr. Mills, a Democrat, was called the most powerful man in Washington — with good reason. For 18 years, longer than any other lawmaker, he ran the House Ways and M
